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Nine Nations of North America

The Nine Nations of North America, according to Joel Garreau in his 1981 book of the same name (ISBN 0-380-57885-9), are:

Garreau argued that everything from politics to urban planning must be redesigned to match the evolving regional or bio-regional sensibilities that now matter more to people than national and international borders. In the Ecotopia, for instance, residents prize natural capital for its biodiversity and self-renewing capabilities, often specialize in environmentally friendly high-technology industries like solar energy, and consider those who don't share these values to be 'foreigners'. Meanwhile, communities in the Empty Quarter see their ecologies primarily as natural resources such as oil, timber and mineral ore. Garreau suggests that these fundamental differences in worldviews were pulling each of the nine nations apart. This evocative thesis has been controversial since the book was first published, but this seemed only to make the book more popular, especially in college courses.

The theory of bioregional democracy and urban secession owe much to his analysis, as does the theory of free trade. Today, in 2003, even critics concede that intervening developments in national and international politics, including the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, have made Garreau's views more respectable - even mainstream. A few would argue that Seattle for instance has replaced San Francisco as the Ecotopia center, but, few would say that these regions no longer exist.

A major impact of Garreau's work has been at the municipal level, as certain cities have realized they are drastically more important under Garreau's scenario than they are accorded in present politics. For instance, Austin, Texas is at the corner of three of the Nine Nations of North America, Chicago, Illinois brokers Breadbasket food into The Foundry region to feed industrial workers, and San Francisco (or Seattle) leads a Pacific Rim region with an economy the size of Japan.

A parallel impact has been to cast doubt on the role of American state and Canadian provincial governments, especially vis a vis these keystone cities. Texas and Ontario share the distinction that Garreau's analysis divides their territory among three nations each. As the 20th century ended with these two jurisdictions ranked as the two worst polluters in North America, some suggested strongly that their state and provincial authority needed to be eradicated, as it was being abused to simply cover up polluters' activities. An alternative view is that the cultural differences between these three regions make the state/provincial government a forum for factional differences between societies, where ecology necessarily takes a back-seat, and pollution increases then as a side-effect.

Those that unite such fractious states seem to be believed to have special power to unite the federal governments as well: G. W. Bush was the sitting Governor of Texas, and that former Ontario Premier Michael Harris was and is a commonly-named candidate to "unite the right." Others believe that regional differences are themselves responsible for such figures rising to power at all, e.g. Green Party of the United States strength in Ecotopia and New England and especially Florida which many blame for helping to elect Bush.

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